Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/843

PROPHET 819 on this fact depends on the circumstance that at that date religion had never been conceived- as a relation between God and individuals, or as a relation between God and a purely spiritual society, but always as a relation between a deity and some natural social group a stock, a tribe, a nation. It was therefore only as the God of Israel that the true God could be known within Israel ; and so on the one hand the little society of faith which had not in reality the least tinge of political coherence is thought of as yet forming the true kernel of the nation qua nation, while on the other hand the state of Judah profits by the prophetic religion inasmuch as the nation must be saved from destruction in order that the prophetic faith which is still bound up with the idea of the nation may not be dissolved. This connexion of ideas was not of course explicitly before the prophet s mind, for the distinctive features of a national religion could not be formulated so long as no other kind of religion had ever been heard of. When we put down in black and white the explicit details of what is involved in Isaiah s conclusion of faith we see that it has no absolute validity. True religion can exist without having a particular nation as its subject as soon as the idea of a spiritual community of faith has been realized. But till this idea was realized Isaiah was right in teaching that the law of continuity demanded that the nation within which Jehovah had made Himself known to His spiritual prophets must be maintained as a nation for the sake of the glory of God and the preservation of the "holy seed." The catastrophe of Sennacherib s army, in which the doctrine of the inviolability of Zion received tlie most striking practical confirmation, was welcomed by Isaiah and his disciples as an earnest of the speedy inbringing of the new spiritual era. But these hopes were not fulfilled. The prophetic teaching had indeed produced a profound efi ect ; to the party of reaction, as the persecution under Manasseh shows, it seemed to threaten to subvert all society ; and we can still measure the range and depth of its influence in the literary remains of the period from Isaiah to the captivity, which include Micah vi. 1-8, and that noble essay to build a complete national code on the principle of love to God, righteousness, and humanity the legislation of Deuteronomy. Nay more, the reception of the book of Deuteronomy by king and people in the eighteenth year of Josiah shows what a hold the prophetic teaching had on the popular conscience ; it was no small triumph that there was even a passing attempt to intro duce such a code as the law of the land. But it was one tiling to touch the conscience of the nation and another to change its heart and renew its whole life. That no code could do, and, as every practical government must adapt itself to actualities and not to a purely ideal standard, it must have appeared at once that the attempt to govern by prophetic ideas was only sewing a new piece on an old garment. The immediate result of Josiah s reformation was the complete dissolution of anything that could be called a political party of prophetic ideas ; the priests and the ordinary prophets were satisfied with what had been accomplished ; the old abuses began again, but the nation had received a reformed constitution and there was nothing more to be said. Thus it was that, though beyond question there had been a real advance in the average ethical and spiritual ideas of the people since the time of Isaiah, Jeremiah found himself more isolated than Isaiah had ever been. Even in that earliest part of his book which is mainly a recapitulation of his experiences and work in the reign of Josiah, his tone is one of absolute hopelessness as to the future of the nation. But we should quite misunderstand tMs pessimism if we held it to mean that Jeremiah saw no signs of private morality and individual spiritual con victions among his people. To him as a prophet the ques tion was whether Israel as a nation could be saved. In Isaiah s days the answer had been affirmative ; there appeared to be at least a potentiality of national regenera tion in the holy seed when once it should be cleansed from the chaff by a work of judgment. But, now a cen tury of respite had been granted, the Chaldaeans were at the gates, and there was no sign of valid national repent ance. The harvest was past, the season of ripe fruits was over, and still Israel was not saved (Jer. viii. 20). The time of respite had been wasted, all attempts at national reformation had failed ; how should Jehovah spare a nation which had shown no tokens of fitness to discharge the vocation of Jehovah s people ? The question was not whether there was still a faithful remnant, but whether that remnant was able to save the state as a state, and this Jeremiah was forced to deny. Nay every attempt at genuine amendment was frustrated by the dead weight of a powerful opposition, and when the first captivity came it was precisely the best elements of Judah that went into captivity and were scattered among the nations (xxiv. 5 ; xxiii. 2 sq.). And so the prophet was compelled to teach that the immediate future of Israel was a blank, that the state as a state was doomed. He did not even dare to intercede for such a nation (vii. 16); though Moses and Samuel stood pleading for it before Jehovah, He could not but cast it out of His sight (xv. 1). It was the death- struggle of the idea of a national religion (vi. 8) ; the con tinuity of true faith refused to be longer bound up with the continuity of the nation. Still indeed the New-Testa ment idea of a purely spiritual kingdom of God, in this world but not of it, is beyond the prophet s horizon, and he can think of no other vindication of the divine purpose than that the true Israel shall be gathered again from its dispersion. But the condition of this restoration is now changed. To gather the dispersed implies a call of God to individuals, and in the restored Israel the covenant of Jehovah shall be not merely with the nation but with men one by one, and " they shall no more teach everyone his neighbour saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know Me from the least of them even to the greatest of them" (xxxi. 33 sq.). In a word, when the nation is dissolved into its individual elements the continuity and ultimate victory of true faith depends on the relation of Jehovah to individual souls, out of which the new state shall be built up (Jer. iii. 14). Thus, for the first time in the world s history, the ulti mate problem of faith is based on the relation of God to the individual believer; and this problem Jeremiah is com pelled to face mainly in relation to his own personality, to assure himself that his own faith is a true possession and lifts him above all the calamities that assail him, in spite of the hopeless ruin of his nation. The struggle is a sore one ; his very life is bitter to him ; and yet he emerges victorious. To know that God is with him is enough though all else fail him. Now as soon as the relation of God to a single soul has thus been set free from all earthly conditions the work of prophecy is really complete, for what God has done for one soul He can do for all, but only by speaking to each believer as direct^ as He does to Jeremiah. Henceforth revelation is not a word to the nation spoken through an individual, but a word spoken to one which is equally valid for every one who receives it with like faith. The New Testament joins on not to the I post-exile prophets, who are only faint echoes of earlier seers, but to Jeremiah s great idea of the new covenant in which God s law is written on the individual heart, and the community of faith is the fellowship of all to whom

[ He has thus spoken. The prophets of the restoration are